I asked my mother about this, in her old age--she was in her 88th year--and said: "I suppose that during all that time you were uneasy about me ?" "Yes, the whole time." "Afraid I wouldn't live ?" After a reflective pause--ostensibly to think out the facts-- "No--afraid you would." It sounds like a plagiarism, but it probably wasn't.

The country schoolhouse was three miles from my uncle's farm.

It stood in a clearing in the woods, and would hold about twenty-five boys and girls.

We attended the school with more or less regularity once or twice a week, in summer, walking to it in the cool of the morning by the forest paths, and back in the gloaming at the end of the day.

All the pupils brought their dinners in baskets--corn-dodger, buttermilk and other good things--and sat in the shade of the trees at noon and ate them.